back to article Acer: Our sales promos left us nursing operating losses

Acer is back to its operationally loss-making ways again after pumping cash into promos to get the products flying out the door - but it didn’t work, as sales fell through the floor. The PC maker today reported revenue of NT$67.24bn (£1.35bn) for calendar Q3 ended September, this was down 21.5 per cent year-on-year but up on …

  1. Stuart 22

    I'd love to boost your bottom line, but ...

    I'm just about to bung an SSD (120Gb for £30) into my Revo R3600. That should breath a bit of life and speed back into a neat £100 box for its time around 5 years ago. My brand of Linux has moved nicely on in that time too. But has Acer?

    They have yet to convince me I could get a much better replacement for £100/£120? Is innovation/Grove's Law dead?

    1. asdf

      Re: I'd love to boost your bottom line, but ...

      > Is innovation/Grove's Law dead?

      It largely is in the PC space and Acer was one of the last to see it coming. Their slow motion train wreck after buying Gateway has been the one constant since the great recession (netbook craze bump aside).

    2. Tom 13

      Re: Is innovation/Grove's Law dead?

      No, but that was always about the number of components not the price of the box. Back when I was working in a screwdriver shop, the constant price of a PC was US$1k +/- $200. It hasn't moved much for PCs/laptops because the price point is a function of the intersection of profit margin and the quanta for payment.

      1. asdf

        Re: Is innovation/Grove's Law dead?

        >No, but that was always about the number of components not the price of the box

        Yeah but at some point the number of transistors increasing no longer was that valuable. Especially when it was just adding more cores that become less and less useful on most workloads.

  2. asdf

    lets break this PR speak down

    >An Acer spokesman in October defended its position to us. He said the company’s 2-in-1 sales were flying (funny how fast things fly off the shelf when you sell them at a loss), it is the global leader for Chromebooks (some real margin on those), was the first to launch a Windows 10 machine (was this before or after half the world upgraded their older kit to Win 10 for free?), and has doubled smartphone sales (when you start from near zero it doesn't take much to post impressive sales growth).

    Acer the new Polaroid.

  3. Tom 13

    Dear Acer

    I was looking for a laptop for my mother last week. I started at Dell, but they've done away with customizable laptops. Then I recalled my fond memories of you from my screwdriver shop days so I checked out your site. Your options were even more pitiful than Dell. Eventually I went to New Egg to look around and once again wound up with a Lenovo. Still not exactly what I wanted but it was better than anything anyone else was offering. I was looking for something in the $800 range with a decent (i5 or i7) processor, 16G of RAM, and an SSD hard drive. I wound up with an i7, 8G of RAM, and 1TB spinning rust drive. I really would have swapped the space for the speed on the drive and taken a hit on the processor if I could. RAM was acceptable.

    1. Semaj

      Re: Dear Acer

      This.

      The whole thing of customising laptops is dead and it's great shame. The only ones who do it in the UK now are PC Specialist and unfortunately their laptops are all huge or ugly and a bit on the high end of my price range (apart from a few really shit ones, which aren't worth bothering with).

      There's a massive gap in the market here that Dell used to fill, I wish someone would step up.

  4. x 7

    Acer make unreliable crap

    and everyone knows it, hence no sales

    1. asdf

      Re: Acer make unreliable crap

      They were always garbage in the US and largely a non player but a decade ago the Euros sure loved them.

  5. David Lawton

    Having bought hundreds of Acers over the last 13 years my experience has been they are too hit and miss. Some models are half decent, then others are utter garbage. Just as you find a decent model they produce it stopped and you then have to try your luck on the new models. This has been more so in recent years as the race to the bottom price was has been happening. They made much better machines years ago when a typical laptop cost £500+.

  6. ColonelClaw

    Here's one of Acer's problems: Every time I've come into contact with one of their laptops in the last few years it's felt like cheap plastic junk. If I pick up my brother's wife's Acer laptop from opposite corners I can feel the whole thing flex, and it makes creaking sounds as plastic panels rub against each other.

    This is not acceptable.

  7. Semaj

    I'm pretty happy with my own Acer laptop (in fact it was the only one that met my pretty strict criteria) but it's definitely not the best quality in the world because it was rather cheap.

    I personally think one problem Acer have in particular is that people mix them up with Asus, who I've found to be even worse. (YMMV)

  8. EPurpl3

    Wow, the best laptop I had was a Acer, I am sorry to hear this, just planning to buy a new Acer next year.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like